September 11th, 2005

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Sports
3 Comments »

An AllSports Pub in Every Town

When I lived in Ireland, it was impossible to watch NHL hockey games on television. During the latter half of my stay, a satellite service was introduced that might occasionally show a game, but it was a huge expense for a small return. Through some programming quirk, the BBC showed the gold medal game of the 2002 Winter Olympics in its entirety. That was a glorious three hours for me.

Some Irish friends have come to visit. They really wanted to watch the All Ireland Hurling final this morning at 7:00am. Unfortunately, broadband Internet access hasn’t penetrated Ireland deeply enough to see the game go up on BitTorrent.

Surely situations like this arise in every city around the globe. Ex-pats or immigrant populations want to watch a particular sport that isn’t available, as of yet, through any available medium.

I think every city needs a pub, restaurant or non-profit club called AllSports, whose mandate is to fill this gap. They’d devote themselves to being able to deliver video feeds from anywhere on the planet (through TV or the Web) at any time. Sportsfans would pay, I don’t know, $50 (they can bring their friends) to watch. The facility is open 24 hours a day, and serves drinks and nibblies.

This is probably a short term problem. Some day, hopefully you will be able to order any sports broadcast from anywhere on the globe. Until then, the AllSports Pub is where it’s at.

Comments: 3 Responses so far

Anonymous
September 11th, 2005
5:37 pm

Did you try the Vancouver GAA club? I think a lot of places pick up the Setanta broadcasts now.

There just isn’t the same demand for Canadian culture in Dublin, though once saw a guy selling Timbits by Front Square.

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Darren
September 11th, 2005
10:23 pm

Yeah, I told them if I’d had a couple more days’ notice, I could have set them up (with suggestions from this site).

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harp
September 12th, 2005
12:19 pm

there’s only 3-4 places to pick up Setanta, it’s tough to get the games in live too due to the early wake ups for people on the west coast. Football (soccer) games of importance’ll fill a pub (I’ve been in packed pubs at 4AM out here) but generally the turnout isn’t worth getting the satellite feed for the owners.

It’s difficult to get people to turn up early, let alone pay say a $10 cover for it, and do it consistently enough to warrany a pub being open for sports. I’ve been trying to find a ‘home’ for this kind of thing for years.

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